Juniper Drives 2020 SD-WAN Consolidation
Juniper has announced that they plan on acquiring 128 Technology for nearly $500 million. They have announced that 128 Technology’s smart networking will enhance the Juniper Artificial Intelligence(AI) enterprise network. Organizations are quickly evolving passed the first iterations of SD-WAN and exploring opportunitites to better connect branches, main offices, and data centers as organizations continue digital transformation initiatives.
CEO of Juniper Networks Rami Rahim stated:
With 128 Technology, we are adding a highly differentiated technology into our award-winning arsenal of campus and branch solutions driven by Mist AI to deliver even more customer value while further accelerating Juniper’s continued growth in the enterprise.
Rami Rahim, CEO Juniper Networks
128 Technologies was a well-funded startup created around 2014, raising nearly $100 million dollars with a culminating series D investment round in 2019. Juniper is also incentivizing 128 employees with additional incentive / retention stock and bonuses to insure a max-exodus doesn’t occur.
This acquisition highlights the continued consolidation we are seeing in and around the software-defined networking space. Don’t be surprised if there isn’t another major acquisition or two as Private Equity and Venture Capital try to extract as much value as possible from these high performing assets to offset other losses.
